What's the deal with printers? They have one purpose on this earth: to print. Why do they not print? Why do they get "jammed"? Why is that even possible? You'd think that if we spend several thousand dollars on a brand new, state-of-the-art, high speed laserjet printer, maybe -- just maybe -- the stupid thing might work.

I don't believe in IT people, so I fixed the problem myself. As I opened the behemoth, I had to find my way through a million mile maze, with wheels and knobs whose purpose I couldn't even begin to identify. All for what purpose? An 8.5 x 11-inch piece of paper. Now, I'm no genius. I'm a mere child. But you'd think that somehow, in some way, some incredibly smart rocket scientist (or brain surgeon) could find a way to invent a magical printing machine that could overcome obstacles such as a piece of paper that's [at most] 2/100 of an inch thick.

This brings up another good point. Aren't cell phones great? You can buy a cell phone that's as powerful as a moderate laptop computer, has as much memory as a small Ipod, and can take a picture rivaling some digital cameras. It can fold up and fit in your pocket. It can remind you to wake up in the morning. And don't forget all those games and ringtones! Now here's an idea: perhaps we could assemble the most amazing team of brilliant engineers and super-scientists, and maybe they could come up with a way -- bear with me here -- to actually make a cell phone receive calls. I know, I know. I ask for a lot. Maybe I'm talking about impossible futuristic technology here. In that case, I'm content with my cell phone that only gets reception in places that I don't live (i.e. doesn't get reception in my dorm room, my parents house, or my apartment). But if they ever come up with this technology, I'd like to try it out. #technology

Why is that in every group of Christians, whether it's a Bible study or a fellowship or some other gathering, there's always that one person who insists on being a divider? They always feel the need to play devil's advocate and bring up their controversial opinions or conspiracy theories. There was MB in my college fellowship, who, when asked why he was so argumentative, argued that he wasn't argumentative. Now there's KN in the Bible study at work, who always says stuff about priests getting paid a lot of money and how the Bible is unreliable and how Catholicism is the only way. My question is this: if these people don't agree with anything being said, why do they even show up? What's their purpose? Why do they insist on disturbing the group and causing division and doubt? Do they want to convince people of the erroneous things they believe? Or do they just enjoy being a distraction?

On a positive note, I'm sure God has a purpose for these people. And I'm sure they're serving some sort of purpose in our lives. I just have trouble imagining what it is. #religion

Posted by popular demand, here's a picture of my computer related injury:

The explanation: I was sort of in a rush and I was taking my laptop out of the bag. I guess I grabbed it by the side and gently let it slide out of my hand onto the table. As it was sliding, its sharp corners sliced away a sliver of my left hand, leaving me bloodied and helpless. After a night in the emergency room and the help of my wonderfully supportive wife Wendy, I was able to resume normal activity, including computer use. #technology

Why do you love me? Why do you need me? Always and foreverWe met in a chat room, now our love can fully bloomSure the world wide web is great, but you, you make me salivateYes I love technology, but not as much as you, you seeBut I still love technology, always and foreverOur love is like a flock of doves, flying up to heaven aboveAlways and forever, always and foreverYes our love is truly great, always and foreverWhy do you need me? Why do you love me? Always and forever

I can't believe this. I just got a car insurance quote from GEICO. It really is better than my current car insurance provider. But then I learned this: GEICO actually stands for "Government Employees Insurance Company." This is amazing. Why didn't my stupid employer tell me about this before? And why did it take so long for GEICO to come to stupid New Jersey. Man, I'm p.o.'d. #business

I don't believe in using words like luck, coincidence, and ironic. It implies that everything is left to chance, which completely leaves God out of the equation. As one of my roommates once said, "God just isn't part of the equation right now." But seriously, to tell someone "Good luck!" is like saying, "Hey, see what happens out there and where chance takes you because there's no rhyme or reason in any of this. The universe is composed of complete disorder, and to have any expectations would be futile. Just try to walk in conformance to 'how things are' and accept things as they come." This isn't cool. I slipped up and told somebody, "Good luck with the Marines" on Friday night. I felt like such an idiot. I haven't used the word luck in quite a while. It's no longer a normal part of my vocabulary. In place of that I use things like "have fun with that" or "best wishes." At least these phrases mean something. Also, in place of the words coincidence and ironic is the word "providential," which means "Happening as if through divine intervention." Now that's what I'm talking about. #religion

Yep that's right. This entry was emailed and automatically posted on my blog. Amazing, isn't it? Here's how I fixed all my formatting and other various problems (stop reading if don't even understand those first few lines): I added a little line to my style.css file: ".mobile-post {display: inline;}". This takes the blank spaces out of blog entries that are emailed (because the mobile-post class is automatically set up to use a separate paragraph -- stupid). Then I figured out how to show all my archives at the top of the page. This was relatively easy. But most amazing is this: sometimes Blogger gives errors that say something like "javascript error EOF bla bla bla." I read somewhere that you can change your FTP server to its IP address. This works sometimes. Or you can close out all browsers and clear all temporary internet files. This works sometimes too. Or you can do this: Go to the template section of Blogger, and click on "Preview." This opens up anything in your blog, even if it wasn't officially published to your FTP site. This way, you can at least look at what you just did.

I'm thinking that things were kinda different in Bible times. I think Christianity would be a lot more believable (for people who don't believe) if we were still living in Bible times. All the people of the nations surrounding Israel acted in a similar way: they sacrificed burnt offerings and peace offerings to gods. To us, this means nothing because we don't know what sacrificing stuff means, and we usually associate it with cults. But to the people in Bible times, it was fresh in their minds and made all the sense in the world. So the idea of sin also made sense to them. If you sinned, you needed to sacrifice to God. There needed to be blood shed for the forgiveness of sins (Leviticus 17:11). Similar to the idea of sin, the idea of a savior would also have made sense: a person/thing to pay the price for everybody's sin. This would be appealing.

There was more to this thought. I just can't remember it right now. It keeps coming to my mind, and it makes a lot more sense before I try to verbalize it. #religion

This may sound kind of crazy, but I have an idea about death: I think the purpose of death is to bring people to God. Think about it: when people die, it causes us grief because it causes a void, we're unsure of what happens after death, and it scares us to think of our own death. But with God, we can take comfort in God's peace, because nothing else will fill that void. We can have confidence that those who know him will be with him when they die. And we can be sure that death is nothing to fear: it's when we meet God face to face. #religion

As an update to a previous post, I'm no longer using just plain text for my website. Sorry. I recently decided to start using Blogger to post to my blog. It has a setting that automatically publishes to my website and I can even control the formatting and stuff like that. So I just went through the process of copying and pasting all the blog stuff from my website into Blogger. This way, if I want to change styles at some point, I can just change the style from within Blogger without having to change every single friggin entry in my blog. Some may say that this was a big waste of time. Absolutely right! Anyway, Blogger also has this thing where you can email postings to a certain address that you set up, and it automatically posts to your blog. Amazing stuff here. I'm impressed. But as for the rest of my website, it's all still plain text. #technology